SOURCE: Rubin, Merle. Review of The Stories of John Wideman, by John Edgar Wideman. Christian Science Monitor 84, no. 159 (10 July 1992): 10.

In the following excerpt, Rubin offers a laudatory review of The Stories of John Edgar Wideman.

For those who feel too pressured to read much fiction throughout the rest of the year, summer brings the time and leisure to settle down on the beach or in the backyard and lose yourself in the world of a writer's imagination.

The new collection of The Stories of John Edgar Wideman includes all the stories he has thus far written: those from his two previous collections (Damballah and Fever) [Fever: Twelve Stories], plus 11 new ones under the heading All Stories Are True.

Although most of Wideman's work is rooted in Homewood, the black section of his native Pittsburgh of which he writes so vividly and passionately, his range of style, form, and...